Suicide had at one time been a crime with a penalty of “ignominious burial” and forfeiture of property. In the U.S. this penalty was abolished so that suicide is no longer strictly speaking a crime. But that does not make it lawful “in the sense that a right has been conferred.”

It is an unnatural violation of the rules of self-preservation, because a “right” to suicide is the “apparent contradiction in a claim of right to destroy the life from which all rights flow.”

It is a breach of (God’s) commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” In modern law, “the value of human life qua human” means that killing oneself shows disvalue for human life qua human. This constitutes aggression against life, and treats life as property rather than unalienable.

Suicide is “against the King,” depriving him of a subject, “transformed in American law to an inherent function of government to protect human life and not allow its destruction by legally permitting self-destruction.

It is an “evil example” to the King’s subjects. So modern government “retains the power to bar conduct which will encourage suicide as an ‘evil example’ to other susceptible members of society.”